In order to fully explain to you what the words of J.Cole meant to me in the year 2022, I feel I must admit to you now a huge detail about the two years that preceded it, 2020 and 2021.
First, for the entire year of 2021 I spent nearly all of my time on the road.
Granted, I have always been a road dog, I can’t deny that one. A self-labeled Gypsy of the American highway, I’ve always felt more at home out in the unknown, than I ever will here back in Albuquerque, and I suppose nothing will ever change that.
But looking back, 2021 was so much different than before the quarantine. I was traveling and seeing things at a quickened pace. Like I was running out of time. But I know now, it was something more than that.
Which can be explained by how I handled the year 2020.
I came out of the quarantine in 2020 for various reasons in a complete and absolute depression. Not the first time in my life, but still one of the darkest moments I’ve ever experienced.
I was hopeless, afraid, sad, consumed by pressure and responsibility, and completely unwilling to even face my own feelings. I was a mess.
I suppose I still am. I don’t think we grow out of that one. And every time it happens I am eventually aware of the severity of it, but only years later, as I try to recover. Which is what I’m at the start of doing now.
The traveling helped, and I did finally pull myself out of it, but so did something else. Lost out on the highway, consumed by my own sorrow and failure, I found the words of J.Cole.
And with those words I found my way forward. But only after a while.
I can still remember the first time I actually stopped and heard him, and it wasn’t like with Kendrick, where I’ve been a fan since the jump, or even say with Mac Miller, where a friend stopped and showed me his music, but rather the opposite.
I’ve known about J. Cole, and I’ve been aware of his reputation as a rhymer, but I was also never in a rush. I told myself, I’ll get to him when I’m ready to get to him.
In 2022 I was finally ready.
It started with a feature on another rapper’s song, ‘A lot’, by 21 Savage. His different perspective on life was immediate from his very first words.
He is different.
Whereas most rapper’s are here for clout, or fame or even money, he is clearly here for the substance, and the knowledge expressed through his art.
Very much in the same style as say Erik B and Rakim, KRS-ONE, or even A Tribe Called Quest, he is an intellectual as much as he is a representation of the street he came from.
There is a higher purpose and goal at hand, though, and yet, not from a confrontational or erratic perspective.
He wants success for others even if he does not agree with the process they take to get there.
‘I never said anything
Everybody has their own thing.’
The song itself is an expression on how a man can have both A Lot of success and A Lot of failure and some day he may come to a point where there is no telling the difference between one or the other.
A life is lived whether for good or bad, and as it carries forward all we can do is carry forward with it. J Cole is as aware of that fact as anybody, and I suppose I am now too.
From there I heard the next song, ‘Middle Child’, and this, on the surface, appears to be an upbeat track meant to bop when you’re out getting fucked up in the club, but that’s part of what J.Cole is playing off of.
I suppose most rappers would just be satisfied with making the club go crazy, but he uses this to speak on things you don’t hear most poets speaking of these days. Especially when it comes to money.
“I hope that you scrape every dollar you can
I hope you know that money won’t erase the pain.”
Similar to the previous song he wants success for others, but he also understands the price that comes with it.
And not every price you pay is in gold.
We all achieve things in this life, and yet often times, once we get there we can only think of the things and even people we had to lose along the way.
It’s a heartbreaking truth we all learn as we get older, both with success, friendship, and even love.
Would we all want to go back and cherish what we had just a little bit more, or can we accept that we left it in the past for a reason? I still have no answer for that one.
From there comes perhaps his strongest track, ‘No Role Modelz’, which by all standards is a musical masterpiece. The way it starts.
“First things first,
Rest in Peace Uncle Phil,
For real.
You’re the only father figure that I ever knew,
Get my bitch pregnant so I could be a better you.”
When I was about a 13 or 14, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air was huge, and Uncle Phil was a major part of that. He was big and strong, but also smart and kind. A proud head of the family, and true representation of a Role Model.
At the time I didn’t have the father figure that Uncle Phil was. I mean, I had a father, but he was too consumed by his alcoholism and insanity to ever notice the son he left to grow up alone.
By the time I was sixteen I was homeless, and he was remarried with a new family. Now, over twenty years later very few words have been spoken between him and I, and I don’t feel I may ever see him again.
He failed me at a point when I was not yet a man, and he was so completely aware of that failure, that all he can do now is cower in a way Uncle Phil never would.
I did not think about it until now, but I spent many years wondering the same thing. What would I have been If I had a role model? If I had somebody to believe in, and maybe if I was lucky, to believe in me too?
So long I spent on the run. Chasing the success and acceptance my father would never give me, and now I find myself a father of my own, to a son who is reaching the same age I was when Uncle Phil was in my life.
How can I live with that pain and still be strong enough to power forward? How can I want success for others while struggling so much for my own? Do any of us have that answer?
At least I’m glad J. Cole is asking those questions too.
And finally, I come to this song called ‘Apparently’, perhaps my favorite J.Cole song to date. The hope in his words, and yet still so aware of that struggle and sacrifice made to get here.
If 2020 was my year of depression, and 2021 was the year I ran from it, then 2022 was finally the year it caught up to me, after all this time always being one step ahead.
And those who live with depression know, you don’t just get cured one day. You can’t wake up and say it’s gone, because even if you think it’s gone, it may come back without you knowing, and you may not be ready this next time.
We have seen too many of those we love fail at this never-ending struggle, one J.Cole helped me understand.
“There is no right or wrong
Only a Song
I like to write alone
Be in my zone
Think back to Forrest Hills,
No perfect Home.”
I spent a long time trying to come to terms with my own rights and wrongs. The people I’ve let down, the people who have let me down in return. Circles and circles of madness of what could have been, and yet always back to where I am now.
Still trying to hang on, and learn, and be something better. Trying to make some sense and even a bit of success as well, to show it was all for something. And even if I fall again, I have come to understand that losing doesn’t always mean you failed. It just means you have to keep trying.
In 2022, J.Cole, and life forced me to face more than I wanted, and yet, as I sit so squarely In 2023 all I can say is thank you for the lesson.
It hurt, but at least I know it’s real.
I’m ready for the next one.
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